Successful Tracking of Dendritic cells (DC) is crucial
for better understanding of the fate of DC based cancer vaccines. In previous
preclinical and clinical studies supreparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) particles
were used as DC labels and the migration of DC were followed using cellular
MRI. Here we show that micron-sized superparamagnetic iron particles (MPIO)
enable the detection and quantification of migrating DC. Since MPIO are inert,
have high iron content and are readily taken up by DC, they are a very good
label for tracking small numbers of cells or cells with less iron content.